Vivendi’s SFR and France Telecom’s Orange have secured the two remaining blocks of 3G frequencies available in France for a total of E600m.
Free Mobile, which had also applied for the frequencies, was left empty-handed in this tender. It had won a block…
Vivendi’s SFR and France Telecom’s Orange have secured the two remaining blocks of 3G frequencies available in France for a total of E600m.
Free Mobile, which had also applied for the frequencies, was left empty-handed in this tender. It had won a block of 5 MHz in January 2010 as a new entrant.
The telecoms regulator ARCEP said that the applications were assessed on the commitments made to improving hosting conditions for MVNOs and the financial bid.
SFR offered E300m for the 5 MHz block, while Orange bid ?282,098,871 for the 4.8 MHz block.
With the E240m that Free Mobile paid for its 5 MHz block, the authorities raised a total of E840m from the remaining frequencies in the 2.1 GHz band they had available after failing to sell them in one block to a new entrant.
With additional frequencies, SFR and Orange seek to cope with the explosion of mobile data traffic.